"You're Worse Than You Think You Are..."

These words hit home last night...

One part of the soccer project that is going on here at TWU is called Monday Night Fellowship. On a Monday night, I get to tag along with the projectiles and head out to someone's house for supper and a time of fellowship...(haha, i guess the name kinda explains itself)

After a good meal, we all sat down in the living room with Shayla, and I'm sure I'm not doing justice the spelling of her name. She worked under CCC for 8 or 9 years, in the women in leadership ministry, and was very relational. From the start, it was obvious she was there to share and invest in us, and everything was comfortable.

She spoke on intimacy with God, and what that really means. It is so much more than a church service on a Sunday morning, and daily devotions. We all do those things, or at least try to do those things, and very quickly use them to justify our established personal relationship with God. Really, though, we're fooling ourselves. Do we really understand what it means to be intimate with God???

I could spend alot of time on illustrating everything that was said, but I want to focus on that phrase she used, "You're worse than you even think you are..."

I really believe that one of the biggest hindrances in an intimate relationship with God is how we approach our sin, in a variety of ways:
1) we dont recognize the extent of our sin
2) we minimize the effect and consequence of our sin, either by ignorance and/or arrogance
3) we tell ourselves that sufficient repentance involves a small prayer and "please for give all my sins, amen"
After raising this point, Shayla kinda looked at us all, and said "Think about all the sins you can consciously recognize, and how bad you really are. Well guess what, you're even worse"

Bam.

Just like that, I was humbled. But it's true. I cant begin to comprehend how lost I really am, and I really need to work on acknowledging that fact, and realize that a simple prayer isn't the whole solution. God demands and deserves SO much more! In my life, I struggle with getting down on myself, especially when I let other people down. It sucks, and it hits me extra hard. But hearing this, and relating it to how frustrated I get when I let others down, helped me realize how serious I need to take this! If I get so upset with just peers, should I not be that much more upset when I let God down?

Thankfully, the talk didn't end there. She went on to say, "For every one time you look at your sin, look at the good news of the Gospel 20 times". It's a fragile balance, as we can easily get caught up in either getting depressed about how bad we are, or go the other way and just be the happy-go-lucky-because-Im-already-forgiven Christian. We need to surround ourselves with a community of accountability, to keep us from going too far either way.

Isn't it beautiful how despite the our human limits, Jesus is still that much bigger???

Thank you Jesus